


The Key to Us

by great-pan-is-dead (TheCrimsonDream)



Series: Parting of the Ways [3]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Angst, Brooding, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCrimsonDream/pseuds/great-pan-is-dead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Louis' planned departure with Claudia on the horizon and growing cold to Lestat, his family falling apart, Louis is left alone and stealing time with him, but the end of their moments together is drawing near.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Key to Us

**Author's Note:**

> Louis POV  
> IwtV era

  The drift was not slow, nor was it rushed: it was disjointed, like a thudding heartbeat that had forgotten its rhythm. Claudia seemed calmed in knowing it, but we would only go away is what I convinced of her; what I near commanded of her.

  I had shied from being treated as it, but he had a way of contact that was as though I were his own: the way he held me, fingers brushed my jaw, hand snaked at my waist, lips that claimed. I saw the way the light hurt in his eyes as I shrugged him off entirely, spat at his affections. It was to put a lion in its place; but in it everything was colder, quieter, out of place, somehow.  
  Gravity would have its way.

  Claudia took to busying herself for whole nights at a time in some sort of preparation, scouring books, and with the house quiet, I found him alone in his room. I entered as was natural to me until the thought occurred that I should not have, but it became apparent that something since the distance exhausted Lestat. He was spread and tangled in the sheets, a mess of blond hair and open shirt visible, clothes discarded over the back of chair. Mortal sleep... or brooding. But we were graceful creatures, and he lacked human habit- this followed neither. The only light lit in the room was a single lamp by the open window, a wind creeping in so that the lace curtains flirted dangerously with the open end of the glass, the flame flickering. The moonlight barely touched him. Lestat who loved the light, in a room of half darkness. He looked so perfectly harmless this way that I was drawn to his side to brush curls back from his eyes in some suspicion, just to see that he had not woken and was watching me. Eyes moved behind pale eyelids in a way that was eerily human, and he did not stir.  
  The atmosphere of the rooms I left felt so disconcerting- a feeling that no activity would shift- the only thing I now thought bearable was to remain in the room with him. I slipped off boots, and silently moved to lie beside him. It still fascinated me sometimes, the unearthly way we could move. I did not think it bold after what I had put between us- his manner for nights after nights had still reached out for me, underlying, no matter how scrutinous his words.  
  A hand lay by him on the pillow, and I rested my head there, ear against his wrist. I soon became transfixed on the faint rhythm of his pulse, the light shining in his hair, the complete peace he was in. Did I love him, or did I merely find him beautiful? Something twisted in me. It was the latter, of course, it had to be. I had no choice in it.  
  The thought of falling into a mortal sleep with him pulled at my mind, an escape from the gloom. No- no, I did not trust him enough for that. What if he should wake before I, and convince me to stay? I would want to stay. Time fell away like this.

 _“Have you come back to me, Louis?”_ I was suddenly sure I heard Lestat say in barely a whisper, yet his voice so clear. His eyes opened slightly, with a sudden glint of brilliant grey. It dragged my heart with them.  
_"Come to your senses at last?”_ familiar of him, correcting his weakness, somehow smug in drowsiness. Nails in his coffin. There was a small breath of a laugh as he still did not move, that I felt whisper light against my face;  
_“Or I may be only dreaming, of course. That’s the way it happens in your miserable books, is it not?”_ I reached out a hand and laid it on his hair, smoothing curls, soft at his cheek, to say; _Quiet, now._ He fell silent, and all I could do was look at him, appearing again to sleep, and give him no answer. I drifted over ideas of what he might have been thinking. Or perhaps he was not, and truly was sleeping, in order to escape doing so. No: fear enough could not have been in him, this was stubbornness. I thought what it would be like to stay like this and never wake, to never have to continue going through the motions of our decaying family. I wondered if I could. Even now I thought, what if all I had decided on Claudia meant nothing, and dissolved- I felt as though if I left him, if he left me, I would cave in. When I had found happiness, direction, in all the things he gave me in selfishly taking them for himself. What if I could not hold that up without him? The weight of it all threatened to crush me.  
  His fingers were tangled slightly in my hair, my lips so close to his skin. _“Do you drink from him?”_ she had asked.

  I left before he woke again.

 

  The following night, he made none of his usual loathsome chatter. He only kissed me suddenly but it was as if he did not know me, searched my face at an arm’s length. A tightening in my throat. Anger was building under so slightly frowned brows. I wanted him to be angry, expected him to be angry; the air was built for it. _Do what you will with me,_ I could have screamed after him when he walked away, _let us come to a demise together, until we hate, until we rebel, until we all kill one another._ That was what mattered. **_Together._ ** He should have wanted me to stay, I needed him to. With that he was gone for the rest of the night. I would eventually believe that this feeling was out of fear, fear to venture alone, to leave the gilded cage in which I lived, but it would take years of rain, years of cold. A household like stone with each other was unbearable. It was unbearable, he was unbearable. He had been so stupid, so piteously dumbfounded in his hurt it shamed me. But that was before he grew bitter, I noted the change too late. Angry. Though in it was suggested I had power, too. The power to so fray the proud Lestat?  
  In distancing myself, there had been a day where after he never quite touched me again, but there were few left to be had.  
  And in time, I came to regret it.

 

  When he came in brash and merry that last night, the thought warmed me for a moment to be easy to him if only to see him his common harshly ecstatic self. To exist for a scarce time with an ease to the tension that choked the house. I wanted to be the cause of his behaviour, just a small part of me. A longing to take him up on his endeavours, his little hope in trying: I wanted To Talk, because that was what he wanted. There was no need to leave at a tear rather than a cut. I wanted his eyes to forgive me.

  When he would not cease to plead my name, over and over until he could not, it was not only him that felt that knife, but I too like a throbbing headache and a confusing guilt that threatened to black me out. But I realised, as the stain seeped nearer, we are like the watching statues in grief of a graveyard: we exist for the agony of it.


End file.
